Jukin Media

Jukin Media is a Los Angeles-based digital entertainment company that sources, licenses and distributes user-generated video. It maintains a library of more than 70,000 licensed clips spanning viral stunts, pranks and mishaps, which it licenses to advertisers, TV programmers, film producers and digital publishers. Alongside licensing, Jukin produces original content for television, the web and emerging platforms and owns and operates a portfolio of digital video properties including FailArmy, People Are Awesome, The Pet Collective and WeatherSpy.

In August 2021 Jukin was acquired by Trusted Media Brands, the New York-headquartered lifestyle media and publishing company formerly known as the Reader's Digest Association, whose brands include Reader's Digest, Taste of Home, The Family Handyman, Birds & Blooms, Reminisce and Country. The combined group positioned Jukin's social video, video production and streaming-TV capabilities alongside Trusted Media Brands' magazine and digital brands and first-party data platform, with plans to launch over-the-top channels for Taste of Home and Family Handyman and add ecommerce to the Pet Collective and FailArmy properties. Following the deal Jukin remained based in Los Angeles, led by co-chief executives Jonathan Skogmo and Lee Essner, and is listed as a business division of Trusted Media Brands.

Founding story

Founder and CEO Jonathan Skogmo built the business on the premise that the future of storytelling is user generated, growing it mostly organically over a decade before concluding that reaching the next level of growth required scale through a combination with a larger media owner.

Business model

Jukin identifies videos with viral potential, negotiates licensing agreements with the original creators, and then licenses that content to advertisers, TV shows, film productions and digital publishers. It complements this rights-based licensing business with owned-and-operated digital video brands and original production distributed across social media, the web and streaming TV.

Revenue derives from licensing user-generated clips for advertising campaigns and TV and digital properties, from advertising against its owned social and streaming video brands, and from original content production. In 2020 the company licensed more than 2,000 clips for ad campaigns and for use on TV and digital properties in nearly 100 countries.

Traction

At the time of the 2021 acquisition, Jukin's properties reached more than 220 million viewers online, generated more than 2 billion minutes of social video viewing per month and more than 11 million hours viewed monthly on streaming TV platforms. The company employed about 270-300 people worldwide. Its "Pizza Rat" clip, a 2015 internet sensation, was licensed to more than 80 TV, film and advertising entities.

Latest developments

In May 2025, Trusted Media Brands appointed Stephen Colvin as CEO, succeeding Bonnie Kintzer, who retired after 11 years; Colvin oversees content strategy across brands including Taste of Home, The Pet Collective, Family Handyman, FailArmy and Reader's Digest.